


by your side (i will be there)

by shineyma



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Season/Series 04
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-29
Updated: 2020-02-29
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:40:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22947958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shineyma/pseuds/shineyma
Summary: A battered, bruised woman shows up at the station looking for Detective Grant Ward.
Relationships: Jemma Simmons/Grant Ward
Comments: 30
Kudos: 128





	by your side (i will be there)

**Author's Note:**

> Ta-da! Week NINE down! And I'm writing way more biospecialist than I expected to, tbh. 
> 
> Thanks for reading and, as always, please be gentle if you review! <3

Grant might be three rows back in the maze the precinct calls a basement, hip deep in musty boxes full of mustier old folders, on a probably-pointless search for a misplaced case file, but his boredom and frustration aren’t enough to dull his senses.

Without looking up, he ducks to the left. The stress ball goes sailing past his ear.

“The fuck, man,” Caldwell complains, slumping against an already wobbly filing cabinet. “That is not fucking natural.”

“Tell it to the judge,” he says absently. Caldwell’s been trying and failing to catch him by surprise for months now; it’s not really worth paying attention to anymore. This file, on the other hand… “Did you need something?”

“Not me.” The filing cabinet creaks in protest as Caldwell straightens. “Got a woman upstairs lookin’ for ya.”

Nope, false alarm. The file’s useless. Sighing, Grant sets it aside and moves on to the next box. “If you hadn’t noticed, I’m a little busy.”

“Yeah, cursing Michaels to the third generation, I’m sure,” Caldwell says. “But seriously. Woman. Upstairs. Asking for Ward. Kinda in rough shape—like, call-a-doctor rough. ’Cept she keeps insisting she don’t need a doctor, just you.”

At that, Grant looks up. “She give a name?”

“Nope.” Caldwell rocks back on his heels. “If you’re too busy to help a damsel in distress, though, y’know I’m happy to step in. Even beat up, she’s like a twelve. Wouldn’t mind playing doctor with her, if you know what I mean.”

That tears it. Even if she _hadn’t_ asked for him specifically, no way is Grant subjecting some poor beat-up woman to Caldwell’s idea of charm.

“I’ll be right up.”

Grant takes a quick detour to wash up before going to greet his visitor. The basement hasn’t been cleaned in about twenty years and he’s spent all day crawling around in it; he doesn’t even wanna think about what might be on his hands, let alone in his hair.

Seven minutes to shower, three minutes to dress, and he can walk into the bullpen wearing his best _calm the civilians_ smile.

Turns out he could’ve saved the trouble; not only is the woman waiting for him in no shape to care about his hygiene, she’s seen him covered in a lot worse than dust and rat droppings. As for the smile, it drops off his face so fast it probably breaks the sound barrier.

Or maybe that’s him, rushing to reach her before she can stand.

“Simmons, what the _hell_?” There’s mottled bruising spreading across her forehead, blood in her hair, and actual fucking fingerprints on her neck, but what he’s really concerned with is the bloody scrap of fabric wrapped around her right thigh. “What happened? Who did this to you?”

It comes out in his murder voice, which has been known to scare hardened cops into hesitating. Even now, he can see Caldwell—probably regretting not forcing the issue of a doctor the way he _fucking should’ve_ —sidling towards the locker room in search of an escape.

But Simmons doesn’t flinch. She never has.

“It’s a very long story,” she says. The hoarseness in her voice is no surprise, considering that bruising on her neck, but it still makes him wanna shoot somebody. “But I need your help.”

“No,” he says, reaching for the bloody makeshift bandage around her thigh, “you need a _doctor_.”

Simmons smacks his hand away. “There’s no _time_ for that!”

Surprised, he sits back on his heels and just looks at her for a second. Distracted by her general condition, he didn’t notice before, but…she’s terrified. Desperate, even.

So while his, “That used to be my line—and now I get why it pissed you off so much,” is _true_ , he mostly says it to distract her. To get her mind off whatever crisis brought her to his precinct and on a happier time.

It doesn’t make her smile—not that he was _expecting_ it to, just kinda hoping—but it does ease a little of the frantic wildness around her eyes.

“That’s better,” he says, and takes her (bruised, scraped) hands in his. “Now. Tell me what happened.” He’s almost afraid to ask, but… “Where’s the team?”

“Taken,” she says. Her nails dig into his skin. “Replaced by LMDs. Robot copies.”

…What the fuck.

“Okay,” he says after the five seconds it takes to put his shock away. After three years working as a cop, he’d almost managed to forget how fucking _weird_ SHIELD’s problems tend to be. “And you need my help rescuing them?”

“Yes.” She wets her lips. “I know you don’t want anything to do with SHIELD anymore, and I respect that—I understand it perfectly, in fact—but all I have are some newer agents, and I…”

Grant’s gonna return to her understanding it perfectly later, because he doesn’t like the sound of that at all.

For now, though… “You…?”

“The others are good agents, but…they’re not _you_ ,” she says, very quietly. “I need someone I know without a doubt will have my back. Someone I can trust.”

He has to look away from that—from the faith in her eyes—for a second. Just a second. Just long enough to get himself under control.

(Long enough to realize Delaney’s eavesdropping, too, and to give her a _fuck off_ look. And to receive a _fat chance_ eye-roll in return.)

“Didn’t realize I made that list these days,” he says once he can trust his voice.

Simmons squeezes his hands until he meets her eyes.

“You always have,” she says intently. “I never stopped trusting you, not for a moment. None of us did.”

That hits him even harder. That she can claim—claim convincingly—that her faith in him never wavered, even after the uprising and all that happened—

Fuck. If he cries in the middle of the bullpen, he’ll never hear the end of it.

“Delaney,” he says without looking away from Simmons, “tell the Captain I’m taking the week off.”

As Delaney sputters (even odds whether it’s about being told to play messenger or the shock of Grant actually taking time off), he helps Simmons to her feet.

“Thank you,” she breathes, and he pretends it’s for the steadying arm he offers.

“Don’t mention it,” he says. “Just tell me everything.”

She wasn’t kidding about it being a long story; _everything_ turns out to be a hell of a lot. The explanation takes them all the way back to SHIELD’s new plane—bigger than but not as nice as the Bus, in Grant’s opinion—into the air, and through him stitching up the actual fucking stab wound in Simmons’ thigh.

The stab wound which is conspicuously absent from her retelling of events, he notes, but he doesn’t comment. If she’s not ready to talk about it—about which of the old team’s robot doubles beat her all to hell—he’s not gonna push.

Besides, they’ve really got bigger problems.

“So, what’s the plan?” he asks once the fucking ridiculous tale wraps up. “Or is that my job?”

“No,” she says, gesturing vaguely to a bank of monitors, “Daisy—sorry, Skye—got a hack of the Framework started before she was taken. We’re going to plug in.”

Ignoring the Daisy/Skye thing (she did that like twenty times during her explanation), he takes a second to turn that over in his mind. He’s no genius, but…

“Isn’t that exactly what the evil robots want?”

Simmons smiles a little. “Not precisely. The others were integrated into the Framework—sort of weaved into it, if you like. The program adjusted for them, altering their minds and giving them memories of the lives their false selves lived. We’re just…jumping in, not integrating.”

“Okay,” he says slowly. “So how does this help us find where they’re being kept?”

“It doesn’t,” she says, and indicates the new agents (Piper, Prince, Davis, and Rodriguez, he remembers, with Rodriguez somehow closer to Simmons than the rest). “That’s their job. _Our_ job is to find them in the Framework.”

“Because…?” he prompts.

“Because the integration is dangerous,” she says. “We have no idea what being removed abruptly from the program will do to them. We need to find them and jog their memories, try to help them remember the real world—”

“—So it won’t be so abrupt when they wake up,” he finishes. “Maybe make it a bit safer.”

“Precisely,” Simmons beams. It looks painful, what with the bruises and the split lip and all, but that’s not enough to keep nostalgia from punching Grant in the gut.

For a heartbeat, he misses the Bus so much it hurts—but this is no time for weakness.

“Okay,” Grant says. “Let’s do this.”

“Excelle—no, wait.” Her smile falls as she interrupts herself. “Before we go in, there’s something you should know. About—about Trip.”

Ah.

“It’s okay,” he says, and focuses hard on keeping his face blank. “I already know.”

“You do?” she asks, surprised.

“Yeah,” he says. “Coulson came and told me.”

The news obviously rocks her—she actually takes a step back. “Oh. I didn’t realize…he never said he was in contact with you.”

“Nothing regular,” he tells her. “Just, uh. He drops by and checks in with me sometimes. Updates me. He told me about Trip. And about Skye’s powers. That kind of stuff.”

He also filled Grant in about Simmons’ disappearance and then, way too many months later, her return. But Grant figures he maybe shouldn’t bring that up.

“I don’t know why,” he adds, mostly to fill the silence, and Simmons visibly shakes off her shock.

“I imagine he was trying to guilt you into coming back,” she says.

Grant huffs a laugh. “You think so?”

“Oh, yes,” she says, smiling weakly. “He’ll be so annoyed that all it took in the end was a mass kidnapping.”

It’s not an accusation. He knows it’s not. Simmons said herself that she perfectly understands his desire not to be anywhere near SHIELD.

Still kinda feels like one, though.

They’ve wasted enough time.

“Speaking of which,” he says, “we’d better get to it.”

He’s not gonna lie, he has some second thoughts while they’re getting ready. Everyone around him except Simmons is a stranger and he’s gonna be completely vulnerable—not a position he loves. Add to that the creepy scrolling Matrix text, the weirdness of having leads attached to his forehead, and the unfamiliar dark corners of the oddly-named Zephyr One…

Yeah. Second thoughts aplenty.

But the team is counting on him, even if they don’t know it. He can’t let them down, not again. Not after the Hub.

And Simmons is full steam ahead on this. He’ll never forgive himself if he lets her do it alone.

So he lies back and lets them wire him up, listens to Simmons’ dire and not at all comforting warnings to the new agents about the risks of disturbing them, and doesn’t voice any of his reservations.

Piper counts them down. Grant closes his eyes on the Zephyr’s ceiling—

—and sputters as he’s blasted in the face with a high-pressure spray of water. He lashes out instinctively—pain flares in his knuckles—he stumbles back and nearly falls as dizziness swamps him—

Just as quickly as it came on, the dizziness passes. Grant’s able to orient himself almost immediately (the dizziness was probably because he went from lying down to standing with no motion in between) and his vision clears a few seconds later.

With some embarrassment, he realizes that the Framework version of him was in the middle of showering. The water was from the showerhead, not an attack.

He’s glad he was showering alone. Having a witness to that would’ve been humiliating.

Still, lack of witnesses aside, he’s uncomfortable. Naked and unarmed in an evil artificial reality is just not a great position to be in. Hopefully it’ll be an easy enough fix, though; if the fake him’s anything like the real one, there’ll be no end of weapons stashed around his place.

So after a quick duck back under the spray to rinse off, he shuts off the water, grabs a towel, and rushes out into the bedroom without bothering to do more than wrap it around his waist.

Good thing he took the time to do that, though, because there’s someone in the bedroom.

…A _familiar_ someone, thankfully. She’s got her back to him, but he’d know her anywhere.

“Simmons,” he says, relieved.

“Ward,” she says—in kind of a weird tone. She doesn’t turn around.

“Step one was easier than we thought, huh?” he asks, forcing a bit of cheer into it. Something about the set of her shoulders puts him on edge. “Found each other just like…that…”

What makes it click is that she’s between him and the dresser, which reminds him that he needs to get dressed. And _that_ reminds him—

“I woke up in the shower,” he says slowly. “And you woke up…”

“In the bed,” she supplies, “yes. I wasn’t greeting you, I was _correcting_ you.” Finally turning to face him, she holds out a picture frame. “I don’t believe my Framework self’s name is Simmons any longer.”

Numbly, Grant accepts the frame. It’s a nice one—thick silver, with a flowery design around the corners. There’s an etching along the bottom—G&J, in big, fancy calligraphy—but he doesn’t need that to understand the picture. Her white gown and his black tux really speak for themselves.

“We’re married,” he says flatly.

“So it would seem,” she agrees.

They’re dancing in the picture, caught mid-spin, both beaming. Happy.

“Wonder whose regret this fixed,” he says, running his thumb along the edge of one of the flowers.

“I don’t know,” Simmons says, “but…it’s not the only picture.”

He looks up, attention pulled from the strangely captivating picture by her tentative tone, to find her holding out another. Mouth dry, he sets the one he’s holding down on the dresser. He doesn’t accept the new one; he can’t. He can only stare.

It’s still their wedding. Still the white gown and the black tux and the wide, beaming smiles.

And between the two of them, an arm slung over each of their shoulders and grinning like a loon, is John.

Grant has to swallow twice before he can speak. Even then, all he manages is a weak, “Oh.”

“I’m sorry,” Simmons says.

He doesn’t have any pictures of John. He doesn’t have any pictures of _anyone_. After the Hub—after his betrayal of the team—he walked away from SHIELD with nothing more than the clothes on his back.

Not that he’d have wanted a picture of John. Not after everything. It’s just…

Clearing his throat, he takes the picture from Simmons and sets it face-down on the dresser.

“Not your fault,” he says. “Artificial reality. We knew coming in that things would be different.” He busies himself with opening the dresser drawers. “We should get dressed.”

He’s still only in a towel and _she’s_ just wearing an oversized grey Henley that, in light of their Framework circumstances, probably belongs to him. (Well, she’s also wearing a series of hickies down the side of her neck, but he’s pretending not to notice them.)

“Right,” she agrees, starting a little. “We can hardly save the team like this.”

If she pushed, he would’ve shut down. Given an enemy to fight, Grant can stonewall like no one else.

But because she gave him the out, he can’t hold it back. He manages to keep it in for a few minutes, but in the middle of pulling on some socks, it just pops right out of him.

“Do you think it’s that he isn’t evil here,” he asks, “or just that he hasn’t gotten caught?”

Simmons freezes in the act of brushing her hair. In the mirror, he can see how her mouth works soundlessly.

Not a surprise. He wouldn’t know what to say to that kind of question, either.

It hurts to see her speechless, though. It reminds him too much of the uprising—of that moment when John, who Grant so thoughtlessly led to the team’s secure position—turned on them. When he pulled a gun on Fitz and told Simmons she’d be working for him, for _Centipede_ , if she didn’t wanna see what her best friend’s brain looked like splattered across the wall.

When he told Grant to take care of May and just trusted he’d do it. He never saw it coming when Grant—

Fuck. He scrubs his hands down his face, pulling his thoughts forcefully back to the present. There’s a reason he doesn’t think about that unless he’s drunk, and not only is he not drunk right now, he’s in the middle of a rescue mission.

He never should’ve brought it up. Not like he really wants to talk about it anyway—just his stupid mouth and stupid heart getting ahead of him.

Before he can change the subject again, though, a distraction provides itself quite handily in the form of a baby’s wail.

The aforementioned stupid heart seizes in Grant’s chest. Simmons drops her brush.

“Is that—?” he chokes.

“It’s not—” Simmons whirls to face him. “It’s not real. It’s a digital representation, a—a collection of code that—”

She’s cut off by another squalling cry. It pulls Grant to his feet, and Simmons half-turns towards the door.

“It’s just a _program_ ,” she says—to herself as much as him, he thinks.

“Right,” he says. “Not real.”

Nevertheless, the third cry draws them both out of the bedroom and into the room—the _nursery_ —across the hall. Well, Simmons is drawn into the nursery, at least. Grant stalls in the doorway, winded by the whole of it—the cheerful jungle mural, the rocking chair, the absurdly large stuffed bear in the corner.

For a second, he’s struggling to breathe. Then Simmons picks up the baby— _their_ baby—and he gives it up entirely.

He knows it’s not real. Like Simmons said, it’s _code_ , just an element of the program designed to trick them.

But watching Simmons—his would-be wife—cradle their would-be child…Knowing John is alive here, alive and at his wedding instead of dead at Grant’s hand…

Knowing the kind of life he has here, Grant envies his Framework self more than he’s ever envied anyone.

“This isn’t gonna be easy,” he croaks.

“No,” Simmons breathes. The baby’s quieting in her arms, reduced to pathetic little whimpers. Each one digs deeper into Grant’s heart than the last. “No, it truly isn’t.”


End file.
